


it's been a long, long time

by greenbucket



Category: Dark Matter - Michelle Paver
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Future Fic, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-13 20:19:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15372537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbucket/pseuds/greenbucket
Summary: It gave him hard limits, but his time at Gruhuken hasn’t killed Jack’s curiosity and ambition.And while Jack hasn’t spoken to Gus since before he had gone to Oxford, and they hadn’t parted on good terms, they were young and emotional and fresh from Gruhuken then. Surely now with all the years passed, they would be able to put that behind them.





	1. 1953

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Canonical events/trauma, ongoing PTSD, suicidal ideation, 1930s mental health attitudes, amputation, some alluded to unhealthy alcohol use. Not major but not minor character death.

_7 th August 1953_

_Jack,_

_I do hope this reaches you in time, as I’m rather opposed to having to organise a telegram or a telephone call for one of the higher-ups – not even in my department, may I add – to beg a response out of you. I’m writing to ask one last time if you would be interested in the conference taking place in the coming year at Cambridge (full details attached in my last letter)._

_I know it’s a bit of a trek for you, but all the best minds will be there, and your name has been thrown around – only no one is quite sure how to get in touch with you! I assure you I kept our past under wraps, but I could hardly stay silent when some of the students have read your papers and were so delighted to have the chance to see the magic first hand. I would hate to break it to them that you’re terribly old and grumpy now._

_Unfortunately, I’ll be away if you do come and so we will have to wait until I’m offered a trip to Jamaica once more (you could pull some strings!) before we can catch up in full. All the same, the conference is well worth it, and I’ve been told a Gus Balfour will be happy to house you. Perhaps you know him, but if not he’s a lovely chap and you needn’t worry about a thing._

_Do let me know soon, they want to confirm attendance and insurance and the like._

_Yours,_

_Francis_


	2. 1937 - 1940

_Norway, November 1937_

The boat back to the ship and the journey back to Longyearbyen feel distant from Jack, like it’s still all happening to someone else. He can hear the crew talking, and Algie asking questions, and Gus stroking Jack’s hair back, shaky. He can feel Isaak by his side, unwavering. It just doesn’t feel quite real.

When he comes back to himself, he wishes he hadn’t. His entire body aches and he feels nauseous with anxiety, heart beating too fast and too high in his chest and every inch of bared skin stinging with its vulnerability. There’s no one with him in his dark cabin other than Isaak, who whines and puts his muzzle against Jack’s hand on the mattress. It takes a minute or two for Jack to get his breathing into a place where he feels able to focus on lifting his hand to pat Isaak, clumsy and still shaking.

“It’s okay,” he tells him, voice hurting his throat on the way out. Jack can’t remember the last time he spoke a full sentence. There’s water by the bed and he sips it, feeling it rest uneasily in his wound up and empty stomach. “It’s okay, Isaak. We’re going to be just fine.”

Isaak whines again, half clambering onto the bed to rest his head across Jack’s stomach. Jack closes his eyes and breathes carefully through his nose to calm himself, focusing on the feeling of Isaak’s fur so the rocking of the boat doesn’t overwhelm him. Hours pass before his exhausted body slips back into sleep.

 ---

Jack manages to hold it together for a total of five days.

The crew have been avoiding him except for necessities, and Algie has been creeping in and out like a very unpleasantly apologetic nursemaid, and Gus has been to visit once but is largely bedbound like Jack to recover from his appendicitis. Jack himself is caught in an awful limbo: the loneliness and fear of being alone hurt fiercely in the many long hours it’s just him and Isaak, and yet the moment someone comes to visit the tiny cabin feels claustrophobic and Jack can scarcely breathe for how much he needs them to leave. He tries to sleep mostly, body still tired enough that the nightmares don’t last long.

On the fifth day, Jack wakes up feeling unspeakably terrible.

He doesn’t want breakfast, doesn’t want water, doesn’t want to even open his eyes. He wishes more than anything that he could just sink into the mattress and vanish, or just sink all the way through the ship into the sea. But just the thought of the sea has his heart pounding and tears springing to his eyes, fingers digging into his palms hard enough to hurt, hard enough that he just wants it all _over_ , and so the cycle continues.

Algie had mentioned on one of his hushed nursemaid visits yesterday that Gus was hoping to visit today, but Jack is feeling too awful to remember until the door is opening, and Gus is hobbling in with the help of one of the crew. He’s lost weight and he’s purpling grey around the eyes with lack of sleep but he’s clean and dressed in fresh clothes in a way Jack envies.

“Jack,” he says warmly once he’s been deposited in the one rackety chair, “How are you feeling?”

Jack hasn’t washed in days, hasn’t shaved in months, hasn’t got up out of bed yet today. He’s thankful the ship is low on mirrors because he doesn’t want to imagine how he must look. When he tries to reply that he’s fine, all that comes out is a pathetic grunt.

“Not much journeying left,” Gus continues, “Looking forward to being back home?”

This time Jack manages a weak, “I suppose,” although it’s hard to feel proud of managing a lie.

“It’ll be hard to adjust those sea legs back to land, I imagine. Be good to be properly warm again, though, won’t it?”

The silence stretches. Jack can feel his chest getting tight again, fear climbing up his throat, completely irrational because they’re miles upon miles away from Gruhuken now and Gus is right here with him.

“Yes,” Jack says. He can feel his eyes filling again and he wants to snap himself out of it somehow, because this is just ridiculous, but he can’t. The tears overflow and roll down the sides of his face into his hair.

Gus is immediately leaning awkwardly out of his chair to rest a hand on Jack’s hip, even as he sounds terribly embarrassed and awkward asking, “Jack, my man, whatever’s the matter?”

Horribly breathy around a sob, Jack tells him, “Nothing. Nothing’s the matter.” He tells himself firmly that the paraffin he can smell is just in his imagination. No creature has snuck aboard and is trying to set the ship on fire.

“ _Jack_ –”

“Gus, don’t.”

“I can’t–” Gus starts, a little desperate around the edges, and then more composed, “Tell me what I can do to help, Jack.”

“Leave me be,” Jack says, ignoring how close it comes to begging. “Please, please, _please_ leave me be.” He rolls over so he’s facing the wall, eyes shut tight. The embarrassment of anyone seeing him like this, but worst of all Gus, is unbearable.

Gus doesn’t speak, for a moment, or move his hand from where it’s resting now just against Jack’s back, but then he sighs and gets up to leave unassisted. The door to Jack’s cabin closes with a gentle thud. Jack curls into himself further, in spite of the ache in his foot, and tries to will himself into unconsciousness.

 

_Britain, April 1938_

Once they are back on British soil, everything gets busy again and there simply isn’t time for Jack not to keep it together. There are newspapers to talk to, and the Royal Geographic Society to answer to, and Jack sees a specialist and gets his foot amputated, and he and Gus and Algie are all packed into one townhouse in London to make getting to any of these appointments possible.

Algie becomes their grumpy, unskilled nursemaid, with Gus strong enough most days to get by just fine but still shaky sometimes, and Jack following a strict rehabilitation routine for his leg. Algie’s a terrible cook, and neither he nor Gus have any concept of keeping a house clean and tidy. They leave laundry for days up on days even as the situation becomes dire, they haven’t a clue how to use water efficiently when washing dishes, and they’re stumped by the simplest of hiccups; the bathroom door squeaks incessantly and maddeningly until Jack gives in and rubs some oil on the hinges.

The one thing they can do is make their beds to military standard, which is a small and ultimately unhelpful blessing.

Jack finds himself trying to adapt the rehab exercises he’s been given to include completing household tasks, for fear that if he doesn’t the house will become uninhabitable around them. Gus and Algie watch with a mixture of confusion and awe at the depth of hidden work that has gone on around them their whole lives, and Jack forces himself to reach for that feeling of pride: _see, I’m good at this, aren’t I? I know how to do things that you don’t, and they’re important things, too._

 It would almost be like a comedy sketch, Jack thinks, if it weren’t for the way Gus’ eyes sometimes go distant and bleak as he sits at the table and smokes his pipe, or the way Algie’s clumsy, overbearing care is clearly motivated by guilt, or the way none of them mention how Jack’s nightmares keep them all up at night. They talk very little, the three of them, and when they do it’s inconsequential and transactional kinds of things. Jack doesn’t know how to cross the gulfs that are forming between them, or how to make himself want to.

The weather outside is starting to become greener, and warmer, but just as wet and dreary as the winter had been, when Jack wakes up from a nap he hadn’t meant to take in the living room. His heart is beating too fast and he’s covered in cold sweat, but he can’t remember what he was dreaming about. They’re his favourite kind of dreams to have. He doesn’t remember shouting, either, but he must have made some kind of noise: Gus is watching from where he’s sat in the armchair by the window, eyebrows pulled together and mouth tight.

“Sorry about that,” says Jack. He can’t look Gus in the eye, and he wishes Algie was there to make some kind of blustering comment that brushed the whole issue aside, where it would be a lot easier for all of them to ignore it. Sometimes just the sight of Gus makes Jack think of Gruhuken, too; about that night and the boat and Gus falling into the water and the ghost inside the hut, inside him, in the water, and it’s too much. Jack does everything he can to think about that place as little as possible.

“It’s all right,” says Gus. He sounds like he wants to say more but he doesn’t, which Jack is thankful for.

Jack sits up slowly. He feels disorientated, and like he needs a cool glass of water. He’s trying not to drink alcohol these days; he isn’t sure he’d know when to stop or be able to even if he did. “Sorry,” he says again. “I know this isn’t making things easier for you.”

Gus sighs. “I don’t need things being made easier for me, Jack. I’m not worried about _my_ wellbeing.”

Jack can hear the implication in his voice; it’s not Gus that is still regularly falling to noisy, embarrassing pieces about Gruhuken, even though he was the one that had been pulled into the water and so has the right to. That’s all Jack. Jack tries to keep his voice calm, even add some reassurance, rather than sound sullen and ready for an argument when he speaks. “You don’t need to worry at all.”

“Don’t be absurd. Come on, Jack, what’s going on with you?” Gus asks, strained. “You can tell me.”

Jack thinks he should have kept his mouth shut. “There’s nothing going on,” Jack says, because there isn’t. He puts an effort in most days to behave how he thinks he used to be like, for Gus and Algie’s sake, but the truth is that beneath that he feels entirely, blankly flat. The nightmares haven’t stopped, and the constant fear is still there, but that’s just it: constant. Perhaps he’s just got used to it all, other than the occasional blip. Perhaps his body has grown tired of the screaming, the crying and the nauseating anxiety.

“I can give you the money to see someone if that’s what you need,” Gus continues.

“I don’t think I need to see someone.” It isn’t that – Jack just doesn’t see the _point_ of seeing someone.

“Jack, you do. You can’t see it because you can’t see yourself, but you _do_.”

Jack scoffs. “And you don’t?”

Gus makes a face, and Jack would feel bad about poking at Gus like that, making clear that Gus isn’t hiding how he’s feeling well at all, but he’s feeling cornered and mean. He knows Gus saw the ghost when he was being pulled into the water. “Not like you do, Jack,” says Gus, unhappily compromising, and Jack doesn’t want to hear it.

“I’m _fine_ , Gus.”

Gus snaps back, acidic, “You could at least be a better liar about it.” He sounds dismissive, and tired, and exasperated, and Jack’s temper cracks in his chest, feeling suspiciously like hurt.

He wants to yell at Gus, to shove him even - just to make him _react_ , to respond with a fraction of the level of emotion Jack can feel burning in himself constantly, layers beneath the numbness. But Gus already looks terribly guilty and Jack knows he didn’t mean to be cruel. He knows Gus stays up with his own nightmares on the nights when Jack’s don’t wake him.

Besides, Jack just can’t summon up the energy to sustain his anger, can feel it already dissipating. Gus is at the end of his rope, and Jack can hardly blame him; he’s a hopeless case, and there’s no getting away from it.

“I’m going to get a drink,” he says, deliberately and spitefully excluding the ‘of water’, and the weariness cuts deeper into Gus’ face but he doesn’t make a move to stop him.

As he cleans a glass – because no one in this unbearable fucking house can take the initiative to clean glasses except him – he drafts two letters in his head.

One is a response to a letter he received from Gus’ parents, who have taken control of his medical bills in a fit of paternal and self-satisfied charity and are now offering a voluntary stint in a ‘very pleasant and engaging’ sanitorium in Oxford due to ‘some expressed concern for his health’. The other is from the Royal Geographic, making Jack aware that there is a placement opening for an assistantship in Castleton, Jamaica, and should he be interested they would be very happy to have him; it’s vague and well-timed enough that Jack has been suspecting Gus pulling some strings for him, which is too complicatedly painful to think about.

He’ll send both responses at the same time, and whoever gets back to him first he’ll take up on their offer. Jack doesn’t want to do either thing really, or to leave Gus, but it's becoming clearer and clearer that he can’t stay here either. It’s time to go.

 

 

_Britain, May 1939_

The sanatorium gets back to him first.

It’s a warren-like building on a hill, and Jack often stares at the perimeter wall he can see from his window in his long unoccupied hours and thinks about the park across the way he’d seen when he’d arrived. The wide-open space, the expanses of green grass, children with their families under the trees; the idea of that park, so close but so far, overwhelms him and beckons to him in equal parts. He fluctuates between desire to escape the confines of the building to endless, unobserved freedom and that freedom suddenly morphing itself into the crushing press of people and noise and life on all sides, too much information and too many potential threats to process.

Not that that really matters, as Jack is not allowed to leave to feel free or overwhelmed. He has his favourite spot to sit, he has his window, and his view of the wall, and the distant company of staff and his fellow patients, and that’s it.

It’s a place that he stays for a few days shy of a year and receives what is deemed the appropriate treatment, in summary, and on balance it gets him back on his feet okay. It’s not enjoyable. Sometimes it appears in his nightmares, too – alone, or mixed confusingly with Gruhuken – but when he mentions this to the doctor assigned to him, a month or so before his discharge, the man’s face stays impassive as he says, “Hm,” and adds something to his notes. Jack doesn’t bother mentioning it again.

No one visits him because Jack specifically requested that no one be allowed to, and he avoids the nursing station like the plague, so he can’t eavesdrop on their gossip to hear if anyone tries. Which is just fine. It’s what Jack asked for, after all, and the sanatorium is hardly somewhere he can imagine wanting to visit.

When he’s discharged, he’s met in the reception by Gus’ parents, who have been the funding behind the duration of his stay. They make some polite comments on Jack’s improved health, which he nods along with, and ask after his foot, which Jack tells them is still on the mend, and don’t say a word about Gus, which Jack plays along with and resents.

Gus’ parents also give Jack all his post that they’ve been having redirected to their estate, as well as a key and directions to a small flat a few miles away in the city centre _because it wouldn’t do to end up homeless after all that, now, would it?_  Jack tries to take it all without a fuss while the utter mortification chokes him. Part of him wonders how he’s to get to the flat, when he hasn’t any money on him or any sense of where the nearest bus stop might be even if he did. It’s not the kind of thing that occurs to Gus’ parents and Jack can’t quite make himself ask, after everything. He’ll find his way somehow.

Finally, _finally_ , they leave him be at the gates, getting into an unspeakably upmarket and polished car that has been waiting with a driver behind the wheel, and Jack is alone to stare at the park he’s been imagining for so long. It’s larger and greener than he remembers, empty but for dog walkers, early on a Tuesday as it is, and Jack resists the urge to press his hand against his chest to soothe the savage ache of missing Isaak. He hopes he's been safe and happy with the Balfours ever since the quarantine period passed.

Jack crosses the road and makes it to a bench nearest the park gate, sinking down onto it. His shirt is sticking to him at the armpits with the combination of morning sunlight (already hot enough that the day promises to be scorching) and the exertion of walking with his crutches after a year of relative inactivity. Jack feels old, and tired, and exposed. There hadn’t been any explanation in the hospital of how to get back into the world after being pulled out of it for so long. Jack doesn’t have any anchors to return to: no rent to pay, no job, no friends or family. He isn’t sure how to slot back into his isolated routine from his years at Marshall Gifford, or that he wants to.

He looks down at the letters in his hand. There are a fair few from Algie, some nondescript ones that could be any organisation, one from Hugo, and none from Gus, which Jack doesn’t want to think about too closely on a park bench. Only one has been opened, Mr Balfour apologetic but business-like as he’d poked a finger at the return address: Castleton Gardens, Castleton, Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica.

“They’ve been holding the position for you,” Mrs Balfour had explained, softer than her husband but just has infuriatingly sympathetic. “Whenever you’re ready, they’d be happy to have you.”

Jack knows that isn’t how job placements work. If it was that simple, he wouldn’t have been stuck at Marshall Gifford for years upon years. The economy is a shambles and war is on the horizon and all he has is a bachelor degree in physics, for Christ’s sake. He doesn’t have any kind of specialism in biology or botanical curation; it’s nepotism without a doubt, the gardens reluctantly yielding to the Balfours throwing their name and prestige around.

And yet. Jack can hardly stay in this park forever, as pleasant if overwhelming as it is, and he feels sick and trapped contemplating the kind of work he could get going it on his own. He could look in a telescope for the gardens, perhaps, if they’re expanding their research area, or act as a secretary. Jack supposes those could be worthwhile employments. Jamaica could be a new start, as untouched by Gruhuken as anything can be; Jack can handle it better now, but he still carries that place with him everywhere. There would be no chance of running into anyone who knew the before-Jack or the immediately-after-Jack, either, all the way across the ocean, and if he could bring Isaak with him…

Jack folds the letter into his pocket, shoves the rest in his bag to read at a later date, and hauls himself up. It really is a warm day, and it’s going to take some trial and error to find the Balfour’s flat, especially on crutches. The place probably isn’t stocked with food. He’ll figure that out when he gets to it, too.

He isn’t at the stage where things are appealing to him yet, but of the two paths he sees before him Jamaica is preferable. It’s better than wasting away in a lonely flat in Oxford, eating into the Balfour fortune, at least. The only third alternative he can see is cutting off everyone and ending up in the Thames. Not that Jack _wants_ to do that – he knows he’ll get to the place where things are appealing eventually – but still. Something to think about.

 

 

_Jamaica, September 1940_

Jamaica is warm.

Rationally, Jack knew it would be; a little desperate to make a fresh start though he may have been, he didn’t just up sticks to Jamaica without a clue what he was letting himself in for. He’d gone to the library in Oxford as often as he could, read every bit of information he could get his hands on, and written to the team at Castleton to get their ideas. So, Jack knew a lot of what to expect, and one of those things was that it would be warmer than Britain, and certainly warmer than the Arctic.

That doesn’t stop the humidity swallowing him like quick sand from the second he arrives. It’s a little ridiculous, the amount of sweating Jack does, and he’s worried that Isaak won’t last in it until finally the paperwork all gets sorted, and Isaak is there with him, clearly in his element getting fussed over day and night.

Jack is busy almost all the time, settling into a new house and making awkward conversation with his neighbours and his cook, getting to know his way around the botanical gardens. He doesn’t always feel quite up to it. There have been some days so bad they don’t bear thinking about now they’ve passed, but when he sticks to his routine he does okay. The adjustment is good; it keeps him distracted, too tired to work himself into a funk and – sometimes, increasingly – reminds him that the world still exists out there; Gruhuken doesn’t hold everything in its icy grip.

And if Jack is a little lonely sometimes – a lot of the time – and if occasionally he finds himself looking at the envelope with the Balfour’s address on it (given ‘just in case’) and wishing he knew what to say, then. Well. A fresh start takes some getting used to. It was the right decision to leave.

It’s hard, too, with the war– but Jack doesn’t want to think about the specifics of that, about who may be where and how they may be. It’s awful enough keeping up with the news, the detached and impersonal articles in the papers, brisk and perfunctory reports over the radio.

The botanical gardens appear to want vague botanist credentials and administrative skills and seem happy enough – or constrained by the Balfour name enough, Jack thinks sometimes in his less-fine moments – to let him take a whack at most jobs. His neighbours tell him to cut down the tree in his garden a couple of times a week, but Jack likes the irony in that he moved away to escape ghosts and the otherworldly only to have the tree outside his house be a beacon to them. His cook tells him that the vetch winding its way up the veranda wards off the evil eye, anyway, so Jack can only conclude the powers cancel each other out.

Gradually, the nightmares decrease to every other night, instead of every night without fail.

Jack likes Jamaica, likes the climate and his job and the people around him. The first time Jack really experiences the almost-daily thunderstorms, though, _really_ watches and listens, is something else.

He’s sitting on his veranda, evening fading to dusk around him as he watches the hummingbirds enjoy the flowers and listens to the buzz of insects and small animals around the house. He’s eaten and washed up his one solitary plate, his single set of cutlery. All there is to do for the evening is to go to bed once he feels tired enough. Isaak sits at his feet, tail thumping the wood of the deck every once in a while.

Jack doesn’t realise how quiet it has become, or how the darkness is more than just the night drawing in, until the first drops of rain begin to fall. They start scattered, individual fat drops of water landing silently, and then all in a rush, the water beating against the ground and the trees and the roof.

It’s not an unfamiliar sound anymore, the particular rhythm of the rain as the wind picks up just a little. It’s almost an unfamiliar sight, though; so far, Jack has paid little mind to the storms other than to soothe Isaak when the thunder spooks him. Jack is far enough from the edge of the veranda in his chair to stay dry, but Isaak moves closer to him, eyeing the sheets of rain with trepidation equal to Jack’s interest.

The rain continues for a few minutes, becoming white noise that fills Jack’s mind with a quasi-peacefulness until the illusion is broken by a bolt of lightning. For a split second everything is illuminated by the electric blue light: the outline of veranda and its vines, the palms and tree ferns and cassias and the silk-cotton tree beyond the veranda, the green mountains beyond the trees. It elongates the second, makes it stark in Jack’s mind, like the flash of a camera capturing the moment in time.

Jack pulls himself to his feet and over to the veranda railing to watch, Isaak anxiously following, just in time for the accompanying clap of thunder immediately overhead. Isaak whines and leans his flank against the back of Jack’s legs, seeking comfort but unwilling to risk getting wet as Jack now is, leaning out over the railing. Rainwater drips through his hair, down his face and the back of his neck below his collar, as lightning splits the sky a second time. The thunder follows swiftly again with the kind of boom that makes Jack understand why people believe in and fear gods.

Isaak is trying to wriggle his way between Jack’s legs, wrapping around him like some kind of overeager cat getting underfoot. Jack reaches down carefully, although Isaak has never tripped him up before, and scratches Isaak behind the ears. He realises, belatedly, that he’s smiling, just a little, and probably has been since the thunderstorm started – another bolt of lightning stretches out across the sky and Jack feels his smile grow a little too.  

Jack disentangles himself from Isaak to pull his chair further out from the house, so he can watch the storm without his leg giving him hell tomorrow. He sits and once Isaak is settled (now curled, after extending one paw into the rain and hating it, almost under Jack’s chair) resumes scratching him behind the ears.

Jack’s heart is beating just a little faster with what feels like exhilaration, or at least the memory of it. It’s not the same at all but being surrounded by the rain and the lightning and the thunder feels like being able to breathe with both lungs again.

“It’s okay, Isaak,” Jack says. The thunder was quieter that time, but he supposes it must still be scary for a dog. “We’re going to be just fine.”

 


	3. 1953

_Jamaica, 1953_

_20 th August 1953_

_Francis,_

_I’ll be there. Please pass along my details to the department so we can arrange the more precise arrangements directly, and if the offer still stands I would appreciate the accommodation._

_Jack_

 

Jack folds the letter, slips it into the envelope and writes Francis’ address, then hesitates before sealing it. His heart is hammering in his chest, and his hands sweaty, but he’s tired of mulling it over. The description Francis had sent has Jack’s mind ticking with questions and ideas. He thinks his work could be a good addition to the conference, with his experience being largely in tropical plants. And when it comes down to it if he’s being honest with himself he wants to go.

It gave him hard limits, but his time at Gruhuken hasn’t killed Jack’s curiosity and ambition.

It would only be a week and a bit. Cold and grey though Britain might be even in summer compared to Jamaica, and full of its own share of unpleasant memories, it isn’t the merciless Arctic. The conference isn't scheduled until early June, so the nights will still be at their shortest.

And while Jack hasn’t spoken to Gus since before he had gone to Oxford, and they hadn’t parted on good terms, they were young and emotional and fresh from Gruhuken then. Surely now with all the years passed, they would be able to put that behind them. And if not, it wouldn’t be a social visit anyway; there would be things to keep them occupied.

“Am I making a terrible decision?” Jack asks the room.

Isaak’s empty bed by the settee doesn’t offer any response, and Jack takes a moment to berate himself for his forgetfulness. He breathes carefully through his nose and reminds himself for the hundredth time that Isaak’s last months had been largely house-bound; while they had been content, it was no life for a dog, no life for Isaak. It had been time. It doesn’t really ease any of the sharp edges of grief for Jack, just as it hasn’t in all the weeks before.

The truth is, he’s been feeling unmoored without Isaak, unsure how to structure his time anymore.

The house and hills are too quiet. It used to be that the seclusion was an essential security, that his schedule was paramount to keeping him on the rails; it’s been the case less so over time, as everyone had promised, but now with Isaak gone he feels increasingly trapped by them, constricted.

Jack still maintains his carefully planned weekly schedule, of course, which ensures he sleeps at regular times and doesn’t forgo talking to people and eating the meals his cook prepares – and then he automatically blocks out time for walks and de-ticking. Jack finds himself scrambling for other occupations to fill the spaces Isaak has left behind and coming up short.  

Jack hasn’t made it this far, hasn’t woken up every day with Gruhuken breathing down his neck and carried on anyway, to fall apart now. But he can see how easily it could happen.

He still hasn’t got rid of the damned dog bed, for Christ’s sake. If that isn’t a sign – God help Jack for still believing in them after all this time – then he doesn’t know what is.

He seals the letter.

 


End file.
